/\Guys,without starting a whole other discussion and all the grief that goes with it..
Huge chunks of the world we live in are not at peace and people wearing very recognisable uniforms are in the thick of it.

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No one is arguing that. The question is whether those chunks are larger today than they were in the past. Fareed Zakaria has made a strong argument in The Post-American World that the world may be significantly more peaceful today than at any point in human history.

Regardless of how peaceful our world is today, Star Trek has always drawn on comparisons from the real world for its stories. That's a fact. It seems this may be a direct parallel to the Federation being the United States and the Typhon Pact being China, the current superpower being faced with the rise of a new superpower.

Anyway, the Typhon Pact is more likely going to be a cold war scenario with 'proxy wars' (using this very loosely) to see who gets the upperhand. Since most of the races in the Pact are or have been hostile towards the Federation, it seems to me that the Pact was organized because the Federation hasn't been the 'glory and honorable' power it portrayed itself to be and the Federation helped these races see that they are better together than apart (who better to teach than the very power that knows the benefits of working together?). Maybe they felt the Federation would try to 'sucker them in' and getting them all to commit their forces to fight the Borg was just the start of being "assimilated without even knowing it", as Eddington so kindly put it.

Britain was at war, every single year under Queen Victoria... The amazingly bloody Indian Revolt of 1857 took place, as did the Crimean War, Opium Wars, Anglo-Zanzibar War, Taiping Rebellion, Boxer Rebellion, Boer War, Anglo-Afghan Wars, Anglo-Sikh Wars, and numerous imperalistic acquisitions. 'Pax Britannica' mearly refers to peaceful trading conditions, such as absense of piracy, not a lack of suffering amongst the common folk of the world.

Regardless of how peaceful our world is today, Star Trek has always drawn on comparisons from the real world for its stories. That's a fact. It seems this may be a direct parallel to the Federation being the United States and the Typhon Pact being China, the current superpower being faced with the rise of a new superpower.

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Certain aspects of the Typhon Pact, seem to resemble the European Union more - including shared government and single currency.

This is not a simple USA and China metaphor - the Typhon Pact does not resemble the single-state economic partner that China is to the USA (TNG arguably used the Romulans for that, at least to some extent, although they took on aspects of North Korea, Soviet Russia, etc, too) - neither does it seem to be a Warsaw Pact - with a giant Russia using the others as satellites.

If anything, the Typhon Pact resembles a kinda 'dark' EU - no EU member states have had recent major hostilities with the USA, and most are economic partners with the USA - but states in the Typhon Pact like the Tholians have had recent conflicts, and seem to be pretty economically independent of the UFP.

How's that? Journalist Ozla Graniv was told by Admiral Ross had had Zife killed, not Section 31. That's the message she passed on to Press Liaison Kant Jorel, which Jorel then passed on to Chief of Staff Esperanza Piñiero, who then passed it on to President Bacco before Ross was forced to retire.

There has literally been no interaction between Bacco and Section 31 depicted since then, and during his scene in Articles, Ross made it clear in his inner monologue that he felt he had to make sure Bacco never learned of Section 31 lest she be assassinated as well.

There is, in short, literally no indication at all that President Bacco has ever heard of them.

How's that? Journalist Ozla Graniv was told by Admiral Ross had had Zife killed, not Section 31. That's the message she passed on to Press Liaison Kant Jorel, which Jorel then passed on to Chief of Staff Esperanza Piñiero, who then passed it on to President Bacco before Ross was forced to retire.

There has literally been no interaction between Bacco and Section 31 depicted since then, and during his scene in Articles, Ross made it clear in his inner monologue that he felt he had to make sure Bacco never learned of Section 31 lest she be assassinated as well.

There is, in short, literally no indication at all that President Bacco has ever heard of them.

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Hence think rather than know for a fact.

If you notice, the scene in Artices of The Federation is told entirely from Ross' perspective, we have know idea what Bacco was thinking at the time...our perception of that meeting is filtered through him.

And that fact you allude to could be why Bacco wouldn't mention S31, if she did know about them then she wouldn't want to tip her hand.

With the rogues gallery of moustache-twirling baddies like the Romulans,Gorn and the Tzenkethi,I would have likened the Typhon pact to Trek's very own "Axis of evil".(gulp!)And we all know where that might lead to...goldshirts on the Gorn homeworld searching for WMD'S.